


Another Beautiful Day

by karrenia_rune



Category: Eerie Indiana
Genre: Community: smallfandomfest, Gen, Round 13, Small Towns
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-27
Updated: 2013-05-27
Packaged: 2017-12-13 04:21:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,963
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/819908
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/karrenia_rune/pseuds/karrenia_rune
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Weirdness is as weirdness does; and in a town like this just about anything can happen.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Another Beautiful Day

"Another Beautiful Day" by karrenia

Have you ever had one of those days when you feel as if you were trapped in an endless loop of repeating events? Well, I have, I can tell you that it’s a pain in the arse to have live through. Not that those at the fringes or even when the whole damn town is caught up in it.  
Things like this have happened before, at least I think they have, it’s difficult to tell in a town like this, and I don’t know whether or not to trust to the historical records in the town hall archives.  
When we had the first inkling of something being wrong, I was in the back yard with my friends, Simon Teller, who despite a good deal younger than myself and his well-intentioned curiosity and seemingly need to hang on my every word and follow me around like an eager puppy, you would think would grate on my last nerve and I would have kicked him to the curb long ago. But I don’t roll like that; and 

Simon, despite his more annoying tendencies, was actually pretty good company.  
The other boy who stood poised on the balls of his feet, holding the plastic barrel of the Super Soaker 5000 in his hands and cradling it up against his chest, with a preoccupied expression on his face, was looking askance at me. 

It was difficult to guess at what be going on that guy’s head, because Dash or the Boy with the Gray Hair as some folks called him, by kids and adults alike, was as my grandmother used to say, was an enigma wrapped up in a riddle. Whatever that meant, I thought. But despite his strangeness, his gray hair, his preoccupied air, and his way of holding himself perfectly still, his thoughts far away; I liked him.

I thought that he and I made a pretty good team. In a town like this, where weird stuff happened more often than any town this size had a right to, it was nice to have someone at my back. 

I suppose he was either too preoccupied to notice when a tremendous yet invisible wave swept through all of us and just in that moment in time it felt as if we, the three of us, the tool shed just to my left, the neighbor’s cat who sat straddled on the fence looking on the on goings with that self-satisfied air that felines had, could have sworn, gulitlessly perhaps, that we had come unstuck from our moorings.

The cat yowled, and jumped down from its perch and into the hedgerow of my Mom’s peonies. For a second I thought I should profit from its example, because I suddenly felt awful, and stealing a glance at Simon, whose face was positively green, and was presently bent over and retching his guts out in an empty planter, he felt worse than I did.

Dash, pale to begin with, looked as if he had just seen a ghost.

“What the hell was that?” I exclaimed when I had my breath back and felt able to say anything.

“I do not know,” Dash replied. “But I would most heartily urge that we find out, before it goes worse.”

“Do you think it will happen again?” I asked.

“It could be an earth tremor, but if I am not mistaken in my reckoning of geography, this is the wrong part of the country for such things,” replied Dash calmly, setting down his Super Soaker on the ground and then going over to offer a hand up to Simon.

“Are you all right,” he asked.

“I, I’m fine, I think,” Simon replied.

“Tremors, huh?” I said, mostly to myself, but Dash has always had good hearing, almost preternaturally so, along with those excellent reflexes. 

For a kid who never knew his parents, or even if he had any to begin with, wherever and whoever he was, like I said earlier, he was a good guy and a good friend. So, while I’d be lying if I said that sometimes, I guess, I was just a bit envious or angry with him, but somehow, in the end we always worked out in the end.

I nodded and then said, “It could be, but I don’t know about you, but when whatever it was hit, it felt more like some kind of energy wave, moving through the air at an incredible rate, rather than moving underneath our feet.”  
Dash pursed his lips and nodded, “I agree, I only mentioned tremors because, what was that saying, once you have eliminated all the possible explains….

“Whatever remains, however improbable it might be, must be the truth.”

“I know, remember, I loaned you the Sherlock Holmes book a month ago.”

“Correct, now we must put that theory to the test,” Dash said confidently.

I saw the way the proverbial wind was blowing and decided that following Dash’s lead would not be the worst plan that the two of us had ever come up with, and of course, it was a start.

**  
I recall running to main drag, having a bit of trouble keeping up with Dash, and Simon, with his shorter legs, huffing and puffing right behind me.

When we got to the town’s main drag, I had no idea what to expect, and in a place like this, that’s a pretty tall order.  
I’d done a little bit of research on tremors, and thought we might be in for another following closely on the heels of the first, and thought it if we had felt it so strongly where I lived, it might be even stronger down town.

The noise and even smell and everything else that one would normally expect to encounter on a busy day in midafternoon were curiously absent. Like they used to say in those old movies, it was quite, almost too quiet. The motor vehicle traffic was down to a standstill, the people on foot or standing on the stoops of their homes or store fronts, most with an anxious look on their faces, others looked dazed, 

“What the hell is going on?” I asked, mainly to myself, and not really expecting an answer.

Dash looked up and offered “It is possible that we were mistaken as to the nature of the energy wave.”

Even as he said this we all felt the pavement of the street underneath our feet shudder and jerk and the smell of gas, tar, and asphalt waft through the air as another, much more powerful tremor hit like a sucker punch to the stomach.

Simon fell down, then I did, then Dash, and then everyone who was still standing did as well, it was like a domino effect. A dust cloud rose up out of a crack in the pavement and got into our eyes, confusing my view, and I wiped it impatiently away.  
When I had more or less recovered, I looked up to see a man emerge from the hole in the ground, dressed in a long trench-coat, with a pair of aviator goggles perched on his head, and a pair of well-worn and oily gloves covering his hands. He was tall, but gangly, had a bemused and very preoccupied expression on his face, as if he did not quite recognize where he was or what he was about.

Simon, unexpectedly approached him, and apparently was heedless of our shouts to stay back, because he stepped up to the man and quite calmly said. “Mr. Reardon, what are you doing here?”

The man addressed as Mr. Reardon seemed startled to be addressed thus and blinked his watery blue eyes several times before realizing that Simon was even there; when he at least came out of his preoccupied state, he looked at Simon and then nodded. “Ah, yes, Simon, is it? I do recall that you came in third or were it fourth in the science fair.”

“Yes, that was me,” Simon calmly replied. “But what are you doing here?”

“The grandest experiment of all! I am stopping time in its tracks! They all laughed at me, and said I was a crack-pot and worse, and trust me, my boy, there is nothing worse than being ridiculed by one’s peers.”  
“Nothing?” Simon asked apprehensively.

“Well, almost nothing, “ Reardon stated, “but it especially rankles to a man of science. But I digress, for you see, I persevered, and after many long months, I have been able to make my machine work.”

“What does it do?” I asked as Dash and I came up to where Simon and the older man stood.

“Why, it stops time, at least for a day. I may be able to stop time for extended periods, with more experimentation, but a day is all I’ve been able to manage thus far.”

Dash nodded and took the man’s gloved hand is own, and said, “Congratulations, but have you stopped to consider the consequences of your discovery?”

“Why no, why do you ask?” Reardon muttered, taking his hand out of Dash’s grasp and nervously wringing the one with the other.

Dash did not seem to mind and then said seriously and quietly, “Because it’s causing tremors, or rather energy waves to spread through the town, you have to turn it off.”

“Turn it off? Reardon shook his head and stopped his hand wringing, only to cover his face as if he were about to cry. “I could not, I simply could not do it, this is my grand experiment, and…..”

“You have to,” I exclaimed. “Before it’s too late.”  
Simon, “Please, Mr. Reardon, if you don’t remember what you told us in class, you have to do so now. Sometimes, even advancement in science has to take a back seat to what is best for everyone.”

“Ah, to be reminded of this by one of my best students,” Mr. Reardon muttered. “Thank you, Simon.”

He nodded slowly, thank locked gazes with Simon for a moment as if thinking something through, before considering his next words: “If you and your friends will accompany me below, I shall turn off the machine.”

“We will,” Simon said, stealing a glance at me and Dash, and receiving a confirming nod in return.

**

The machine was an amalgam of turbines and cables and assorted parts that I did not recognize, so I could not have put a name to them if I tried. I think that Dash did, but as ever he was keeping close-mouthed about it. I could at least recognize that monitors keyboards and other computer equipment that had been scattered about the chamber in the cavernous area underneath the street.  
Reardon had led us to a large panel incised with blinking lights and buttons, and instructed us to press them all in a sequential order, which we did. 

“There, it is done,” he said with a sigh.

“You won’t do anything like this again, will you, Mr. Reardon?” Simon asked plaintively.

“I don’t know if it was the fact that Simon had reminded him of his teacher’s passion for science or doing what was right, or the fact that Simon had that look that certain kids get when they want something very badly, but it caught up at Reardon at that precise moment and he wiped all traces of tell-tale moisture out of the corners of his eyes.

“My boy, you have reminded me of what is important, and for that I thank you. But it will do a great deal of effort to undo all…”he trailed off and waved a gloved hand around at the equipment and assorted monitors, “this.”

“We’ll help,” Dash said. 

“We will?” I said.

“Of course we will,” Simon seconded.

“I guess we will,” I said.


End file.
